Lessons Learnt From WASH Action Research With Practitioners in Four Countries

This is the final report from the Action Research for Learning programme, a three-year initiative (2013 -- 2015), led by IRC, to improve the effectiveness of existing hygiene promotion and community empowerment programmes of selected local Dutch WASH Alliance partners in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana and Uganda. In Ethiopia and Bangladesh, the focus was on hygiene promotion, while in Ghana and Uganda the focus was on community empowerment interventions.

Overall, the programme emphasised a decentralised approach by focusing on empowering communitiesÃ¢â‚¬â€in itself an important positive development. However, the accompanying financial and human resource constraints did not always work optimally in the countries.
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Having local researchers work with local stakeholders on the development of monitoring tools has been an important building block supporting the success of this programme.
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Both the local researchers and the local stakeholders recommended further integration in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation process between the hardware (e.g., construction of physical facilities) and software (e.g., hygiene promotion) components.
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